DMA introduces new offerings for e-mail marketers

As part of ongoing efforts to improve strategic insights for businesses and nonprofit organizations using interactive marketing, the Direct Marketing Association announced three new initiatives that strengthen its offerings for members involved in e-mail marketing.

First, the DMA will merge its E-mail Marketing Council with the E-mail Experience Council, an independent global organization that brings thought leadership and problem-solving to the e-mail marketing community.

As part of DMA's agreement to acquire the EEC, the memberships of EEC and DMA's E-mail Marketing Council will merge under the EEC name. The combined group will continue to promote best practices to guide marketers in developing successful e-mail programs. The new EEC will also play an active role helping to shape the policies and standards that will drive the future of the channel.

Jeanniey Mullen, EEC senior partner and executive director for global e-mail marketing at OgilvyOne Worldwide, will serve as co-executive chair of the new combined organization, along with Michael Della Penna, chief marketing officer for Epsilon and chair of DMA's E-mail Marketing Council.

DMA also announced an agreement with Return Path to develop a new online tool to help e-mail marketers better navigate the complexities of authentication and benchmark their progress against other key reputation indicators.

The new E-mail Reputation Registry will verify a sender's compliance with regulatory requirements and score the sender's technical practices against industry benchmarks. The free service will launch later this year, giving DMA member companies access to third-party data about their e-mail programs. In addition to providing authentication assistance, the registry will also help DMA members identify potential infrastructure security holes, verify CAN-SPAM compliance, and measure end-user spam complaints.

DMA's Research and Market Intelligence team will also publish an anthology of white papers on expert-level practices and how to implement them, and will focus its next Creative Series report on the e-mail channel.

"As interactive channels continue their explosive growth, we have to marshal our resources to help marketers use these channels effectively," said John A. Greco Jr., president/CEO of the DMA, in a statement. "Maximizing the potential of e-mail marketing is crucial to the continued success of many organizations, so we are particularly pleased to be working together with some of the most respected names in the e-mail space to provide these new offerings for our members."

US companies spent $400 million on e-mail marketing in 2006. This amount is expected to double by 2011, according to DMA's latest economic impact research.